I’ve been reading an illuminating book, Last Call at The Hotel Imperial, by Deborah Cohen. It focuses, in part, on a remarkable American journalist, Dorothy Thompson, who was a trailblazer in her field in the 1930s and 1940s. It was a time when, as the author notes, “half the brainpower of the world was still virtually an untapped resource.” Thompson, and other women like her, did much to change that. The track toward progress, centuries overdue, opened wide.
In that context, it was even more depressing to be confronted this week with the leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling quashing the constitutional right to abortion – a battle that was meant to have been settled ages ago in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade.
Disempowering women at this point in time, to that extent. Pushing them back a half-century. Can what the Supreme Court is doing – with support from the Republican Party – possibly stand? Can they really get away with this?
In the present-day United States, a country where reactionary forces have taken hold to an extent unimaginable a couple of decades ago, we know the answer.
“Welcome to the U.S.A.,” said a post on a newspaper comment board Tuesday, “where you can legally own an arsenal of military-grade weapons, yet women have no rights to their own uterus.”
Although its reputation has been bruised in recent times, the Supreme Court was the one remaining branch of government for which Americans maintained a level of trust. That’s gone now.
Not only is there a wide disconnect between the Supreme Court and the American population on this vital issue (poll after poll shows that two-thirds of Americans wish to uphold Roe), there’s also the stunning hypocrisy of two of the court’s justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Both had indicated in their Senate confirmation hearings that they would uphold Roe, but now they’ve given their backing to a draft ruling that would accomplish just the opposite. What credibility do they have now?
Should the draft ruling become the court’s formal decision, what a momentous victory it would be for the anti-abortion crowd who fought so long for it. Strangely, though, they haven’t been boasting about it. Maybe they have a sense of the backlash it could foment.
For the Democrats, it’s not so much a wake-up call they have been hit with as it is a five-alarm blaze. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could hardly have been more explicit. Conservative justices, he said, “lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation, all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy.”
What remains to be seen is whether the incredible level of outrage and disgust can mobilize progressives like never before, perhaps in a way that might save the Democrats from the disaster that seemingly awaits them in the coming midterm elections. In a way that might send a signal to the court that the country won’t stand for the decision it appears ready to make. In a way that might compel Chief Justice John Roberts, who reportedly opposes the draft opinion, to change the mind of another member of the court – Justice Kavanaugh being a possibility – and prevent Roe from being overturned.
In the past, threats to Roe have not been a great vote mobilizer for the Democrats. This was evident in last year’s governor race in Virginia, when Republican anti-abortion candidate Glenn Youngkin won despite Democrats’ efforts to highlight the reproductive-rights issue.
This is different, however. Politico’s historic scoop on Roe isn’t about a threat. It details the nearest thing to a fait accompli, a decision that could lead to other social-conservative crackdowns on individual rights, including same-sex marriage.
President Joe Biden could head off the crisis by a rule change that would abolish the filibuster, thus giving his party enough votes to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a law that would guarantee access to abortion in all states. He doesn’t appear willing to go that far, nor does he seem keen to expand the number of justices on the court to include more Democrats, for fear of touching off a backlash from the other side.
But the culture war – on issues of race, voting rights, immigration, climate change and now women’s rights – has moved to a new and dangerous escalation point.
To save the United States from being bound by the creed of reactionaries, from those who were even willing to foment a coup attempt, the surge of progressive resistance has to happen now. If the latest affront can’t galvanize the Democratic resistance, nothing will.
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Lawrence Martin